Free-rein school recess next casualty of risk-phobia?

“Since the 1970s, the Safe Playground movement has all but eliminated ‘adventure playgrounds’ and any equipment deemed dangerous, yet the incidence of accidents has remained essentially unchanged,” writes Paul Bennett. (STEVE WADDEN / Staff)

School recess remains one of the favourite times of the day for most elementary school students. Until recently, it was also a largely forgotten part of school life.

With the advent of the “overprotected kid” and the spread of well-intentioned social reform campaigns against bullying, obesity and boredom, recess has become a hot topic for public discussion.

Halifax’s “Mr. Playground,” Alex Smith, is completely “nuts” about preserving children’s play spaces. Over the past five years, the father of five children has rediscovered child’s play and logged over 50 of some 400 HRM playgrounds. His other website, PlayGroundology, scans the world for the latest news and research about children at play.

Alex Smith is also a passionate defender of school recess — that traditional 15-minute free-play time carved out in the Education Act for Nova Scotia elementary school students.

“Moving to the beat of play,” Smith once quipped, “there are never too many playground adventures for a child.”

Cancelling recess or attempting to revamp unstructured play attract his immediate attention. When a February 2011 cold snap hit Halifax, Smith lamented his local school’s decision to cancel recess (at -18C) and to deny his primary school son outdoor play at lunch.

More recently, on CBC Radio’s Maritime Noon, he expressed some worries about the threat to free play in an increasingly risk-averse society.

Many school administrators and psychologists now see free play at recess to be dangerous and threatening, especially for marginalized or bullied kids. A new breed of North American parents, armed with Lenore Skenazy’s 2010 bestseller, Free-Range Kids, have risen in defence of unstructured free play as a critical component in the education of healthy, happy and creative children.

Today’s school administrators view the world through a child protection lens and tend to be hypersensitive to the dangers lurking in and around schools, particularly on the playgrounds.

A CBC News report aired in September 2013 claimed that 28,000 children were injured yearly on playgrounds and that largely unsubstantiated estimate only stoked those fears.

Student injuries and accidents are upsetting — and their impact should not be minimized.

Since the 1970s, however, the Safe Playground movement has all but eliminated adventure playgrounds and any equipment deemed dangerous, yet the incidence of accidents has remained essentially unchanged.

The founder of PlayGroundology corroborates this, noting on this blog that he cannot recall one serious accident on Halifax’s 400 playgrounds over the past five years.

Public concern about children’s health and safety, according to British child health researcher Tim Gill, does not reflect the real level of risk. In his 2007 book, No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk-Averse Society, Gill points out that children are no more likely to be abducted or murdered than they were 30 years ago.

In 1971, some four out of five British kids aged seven or eight walked or biked to school on their own; today fewer than one in 10 do so. Fear of being sued, he concedes, is a much bigger factor affecting the policies of school districts and providers of facilities for children.

School recess has been significantly eroded in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Since the 1970s, children have lost about 12 hours a week of free time, including a 25 per cent reduction in play time and a 50 per cent decrease in unstructured outdoor activities.

In 2011, a U.S. study reported that some 40 per cent of districts were either eliminating recess or considering such action, mainly to recoup instructional time.

New research initiated by Brock University’s Dr. Lauren McNamara and generated by her “Recess Project” holds promise for breaking the impasse. Her three-year study of Niagara Region schools demonstrated that most of today’s children have “forgotten how to play,” particularly outdoors.

While conscious of the loss of free time in a world where kids are highly programmed, McNamara claims that there is a critical need to re-teach kids how to play, particularly during recess. Her studies show how activity levels soar and fighting subsides when new playground equipment is added and yard supervisors or junior leaders provide guidance to promote physical exercise, active engagement and fair play among the kids.

Achieving the right balance is not as easy as outside experts might expect. The Peel Region recess program, Playground Activity Leaders in Schools Program (PALS), initiated by a Toronto region health authority and touted by McNamara, is an attempt to move in that direction.

Recess, it seems, is becoming another adult social mechanism for reducing bullying and inappropriate behaviour and increasing sagging levels of physical activity, particularly among kids from grades 5 to 8. Under more heavy-handed school administration, it may even devolve into adults or their young surrogates micromanaging and taking the adventure out of recess.

Education policy-makers seem to be fiddling with the sanctity of unstructured child’s play so prized by Smith and “free-range kid” advocates.

Whatever happens, let’s safeguard recess as the last refuge of free play while striking a reasonable balance between freedom and purposeful activity.